Pay no attention to the people behind the curtain

Saturday, June 20, 2009

That's not what I saw

by folkbum

When I got home from my morning at Marquette yesterday, I mentioned that at lunch--the program I teach with offered us a working lunch as part of the teacher orientation day--the dining hall was full of Teach for America kids. I think my exact words were something like, "It looked like the yuppie cloning machine had been stuck on high."

Here's Michael Sears's photo accompanying the story; maybe you can see the "diverse" faces in the photo better than I can.(Click through to the paper's story at some point for the bigger photo. Or, heck, go out to the newsstand and buy one. Newspapers are a dying medium, so it surely will be a collector's item some day, worth at least as much as a Bryan Clutterbuck rookie card.)

Or maybe the "diverse" nature of the group stems from the fact that there are alumni from both Notre Dame and Wesleyan.

Look, you all know how I feel about TfA. I suppose it's better, in many ways, to give these beleaguered Ivy-Leaguers jobs this way than letting more of the clog them unemployment lines. And, as lily-white as I am, I should hardly be talking. But Milwaukee's teachers do not currently reflect the look of the students very well, and this isn't going to bring us any closer.

I do wish these kids the best of luck, and hope they stick around longer than just a couple of years.